An article today on CNET talks about the battle for customers between phone and cable companies - particularly now that they offer the same services. One of the highlights is the reference to Comcast hiring over 15,000 customer service reps and technicians over the last year and a half - which is fantastic, but this massive onboarding I predict will not increase the overall customer satisfaction of their customers.
In the customer experience it is often the people on the front lines - who in the organization are probably the lowest paid - that have the largest impact on customer satisfaction. It is the representative on the other end of the phone who is putting company policy in action and it is the technician who is the only face of the company when they are doing an install or repair at your house or work. The article also makes a reference to a hilarious story about a technician who actually fell asleep at a customer's house - video below.
This also reminds me of an engagement that a colleague of mine was involved in where part of measuring the customer experience was to do a ride along with a technician for a couple of days. It turns out that one of the largest complaints from customers around installs was technicians cutting across lawns and gardens to do their work - how do you account for that in a survey?
The hirings made by Comcast are great and they should continue to invest in their front line staff and customer experience. However, given the onboarding / ramp up time for this type of work and the immediate impact that these roles have on customer satisfaction, it will be some time before a positive impact is made.
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I totally agree. One time the cable company ripped up my lawn to lay cable to my neighbour's house. They did a crappy job fixing the turf and now I have to do the landscaping to fix it. They pissed me off and I wasn't even the customer they were servicing. How do they capture that in a survey?
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